Public universities should be transparent to the public; their operations should be open to scrutiny. Often, however, school officials would rather keep some things secret, figuring (correctly) that the taxpayers would conclude that their money was being wasted. And that’s where open-records laws come in. They are supposed to enable members of the public to get at the data.
The problem is that those laws have loopholes that enable the officials to delay and obfuscate when people have requested information they would rather not disclose. In today’s Martin Center article, Neetu Arnold and Ian Oxnevad (both affiliated with the National Association of Scholars) examine the weaknesses in open-records laws and suggest corrections.
Arnold and Oxnevad write that, “Public universities are subject to state open-records laws, which are modeled after the federal government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Open-records laws allow the general public to access, upon request, documents that are in the possession of government entities. While this may seem straightforward, the devil is in the details: There are many ways by which higher-education institutions can manipulate the provisions in these laws to delay, obfuscate, and outright deny information that is rightfully owed to the public.”
What should be done? The authors have four suggestions.
First, prevent conflicts of interest for officials charged with handling open-records requests. Second, make public-university foundations subject to the law. Third, implement centralized systems for information recovery. Fourth, prevent excessive delays and fees.
The authors conclude, “Our reforms would empower the American public to access information that should be public. This goes beyond improving public information about foreign-influence concerns. FOIA laws should be improved for the sake of all reformers.”
They’re right.